Create The Perfect Outdoor Oasis With The Design Trend That Will Be Huge In 2024
Outdoor spaces can be a beautiful way to enjoy nature, expand the liveable footage of your home, and set the perfect stage for entertaining. All too often, homeowners put a lot of planning and detail into finely crafting indoor spaces to the detriment of considering their yards, porches, and gardens with just as much care. If you're guilty of throwing a couple of chairs and a grill into your backyard and calling it a day, there is a great and easy way to ensure that your exterior spaces are just as charming and cozy as your interior. Begin by thinking of your entire home as a single unified space.
This unity can come from similar colors, patterns, and finishes, as well as materials like stone, tile, and wood that are carried through interiors and exteriors. Room & Board merchandising and design director Jenon Bailie recently reinforced the importance of this with Better Homes & Gardens. "Having a continuity of material connects the indoors to the outdoors," he said. The result of careful attention to unity is a stylish continuity and greater care with exterior design. It also makes your choices much easier when you're feeling overwhelmed with options.
Drawing from inside spaces
Many designers, like HGTV's Nate Berkus, have long celebrated a streamlined color continuity between indoor and outdoor design elements. When choosing paint colors, upholstery, and patterns for the inside of your home, think about how they can also be incorporated with nature. This can be as simple as choosing elements that have equal relevance in both, such as bringing nature-focused patterns indoors or placing things like plaid and stripes outside in similar colors and textures. If your interior is mostly neutrals, keep that similar color palette outdoors, such as mixing grays and charcoal or blending shades of white and taupe. Those with a colorful interior aesthetic can use similar shades and intensities for elements like outdoor seating cushions, umbrellas, and awnings.
Don't forget about materials and finishes. Interior residences designed with oak can use oak for outdoor furniture as well, just with a more outdoor-friendly design and finish. If you've designed your home with stone and textured materials, use those same materials on your patio with things like planters, outdoor fireplaces, and tile work. Homes with romantic ironwork on the interior can be continued outside with things like lighting and fencing.
Taking inspiration from the landscape
You may also want to think about how the interior of your home's elements meet the existing landscape around you. If you have a chic cottage interior but are surrounded by desert, consider how to marry those two dramatically different aesthetics together in a cohesive way through color and material, like using a lot of warm colors, woven patterns, and terracotta pottery. If you have a sleek, modern home in a rural or wooded setting, try to find the places where they overlap in materials, finishes, and colors, such as installing raw, unfinished wood tables or countertops, which can feel earthy and contemporary and create unity with the outdoors.
A great way to make this easy is to focus on using outdoor-friendly materials inside like stone tile and terracotta. You can also look for common threads in design elements that can be found equally indoors and out, such as greenery and florals, rattan or wicker, stone accents, and nature-drawn tones like green, grays, brown, and soft blues.